The copyright and license of this wiki are supposed to be available at [http://wiki.debian.org/copyright.html copyright.html], but it wasn't. So it's unclear which license apply to the content of this site (there has been lots of claims).
Discussion is currently ["DebianWikiIsNotGFDL"] ; 385797
Wiki Licencing Terms
Dear Debian System Administrators: There are concerns regarding unclear licencing of material on this wiki. These concerns have been voiced on the debian-devel mailing list (references at the end).
In summary, the wiki should express a clear licence for the content on it, under which material can be contributed to and re-used with. This licence should be DFSG-compliant, with the suggestion being the MIT licence (see references).
This will allow material from compatible resources to be incorporated into these pages, such as code/configuration snippets where appropriate, or larger documents. The debian developer's reference and new maintainer's guide are both licenced under the GPLv2, for example.
please activate page_licence_enabled and page_licence_terms to ensure that each page expresses the licence.
-- JonDowland
Example
The MoinMoin options to enable licences are:
page_licence_enabled = 1 page_licence_terms = u"SiteLicence"
Where ?SiteLicence could be any appropriate term. Then please include the licence chosen on the relevant wiki page.
Legacy Wiki Content/Specifying Multiple Licenses
Because there will be content with multiple licenses, instead of attempting to slap a blanket license on every page, what I suggest instead is to use [http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/SectionParser ?SectionParser] (or similar) to add [http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/MetaDataInMoin metadata] to each page that gives the licensing status of each of the wiki pages. To do this, we need the following:
[http://moinmoin.wikiwikiweb.de/SectionParser ?SectionParser] installed
- Templates modified to include basic section code (or something similar) at the bottom indicating which license they are licenced under.
[[[#!section #class special #format wiki #License GPL v2 or later at your option ]]]
License/Copyright |
|
License |
["GPLv2"] or later at your option |
Authors |
Importing other Wiki content
Work is progressing on writing scripts to import the material from http://wiki.debian.net/, with interest expressed on importing material from other wikis, too. (See MigrationStatus).
I request that this is not done until it is clear
- what licence material here is to be provided under
- whether the licence for the material to be imported is compatible.
The wiki.debian.net copyright is at http://wiki.debian.net/copyright.html
I shall start a discussion on -legal requesting help determining the best course of action here.
- update as of Tue Oct 11 16:03:37 BST 2005: the request was unheeded, and the material has been imported without further discussion. The question is now whether the material on this site is DFSG at all and if it ever will be.
References
first post regarding licence concerns to -devel: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2005/09/msg00249.html
[http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/10/msg00001.html A reply to the first reference on -legal]. Most replies on -devel were offtopic or useless.
About wiki licensing in general
Andrew Suffield's advice on MIT licence for wiki pages on -legal (the rest of the thread is interesting too): http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2005/08/msg00070.html (via DebianWeeklyNews)
Similar discussion started on -project, MoinMoin maintainer's willingness to help: http://lists.debian.org/debian-project/2005/09/msg00022.html